Day: March 14, 2015

Hey, Mathletes, it’s National Pi Day – the one day a year (3/14) when we take time to reflect on the mysterious and endlessly cool constant that circles around us.

At first, Pi Day was gimmicky, but now it’s a gone-rampant big deal. Have you signed up for a pi mile race yet? or couples counseling?

Pi is everywhere ~ in The Simpsons and Star Trek, The Matrix, and, of course, the novel Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

There’s even a new literary form called a ‘piem.’ It’s a poem where the length of each word is the same as the number in the pi sequence. For example, here’s a baudy little ditty written by British mathematician Sir James Jeans in the early twentieth century to remember the first fifteen digits. (Hey, poets, write a piem, leave it in the comments. You know you want to.)

How I want a drink,
Alcoholic of course,
After the heavy lectures
Involving quantum mechanics.

There’s plenty of pi-tunes out there but have a listen to this English singer and songwriter. Kate Bush is known for her expressive four-octave soprano voice…and idiosyncratic lyrics.

Sweet and gentle sensitive man
With an obsessive nature and deep fascination
For numbers
And a complete infatuation with the calculation
Of PI

Oh he love, he love, he love
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity

3.1415926535 897932
3846 264 338 3279

Oh he love, he love, he love
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity
But he must, he must, he must
Put a number to it

50288419 716939937510
582319749 44 59230781
6406286208 821 4808651 32

Oh he love, he love, he love
He does love his numbers
And they run, they run, they run him
In a great big circle
In a circle of infinity